Related papers: Microlensing: Prospects for the Future

The number of small satellites has grown dramatically in the past decade from tens of satellites per year in the mid-2010s to a projection of tens of thousands in orbit by the mid-2020s. This presents both problems and opportunities for…

Microlensing surveys search for the transient brightening of a background star that is the signature of gravitational lensing by a foreground compact object. This technique is an elegant way to search for astrophysical candidates that might…

Strong gravitational lensing of quasars has the potential to unlock the poorly understood physics of these fascinating objects, as well as serve as a probe of the lensing mass distribution and of cosmological parameters. In particular,…

The microlensing of background stars by compact objects in globular clusters is analyzed. The main strength of the proposed search is the direct relationship between the lens mass and the time scale of the microlensing event. The main…

Planet detection through microlensing is usually limited by a well-known degeneracy in the Einstein timescale $t_E$, which prevents mass and distance of the lens to be univocally determined. It has been shown that a satellite in…

Kepler's quest for other Earths need not end just yet: it remains capable of characterizing cool Earth-mass planets by microlensing, even given its degraded pointing control. If Kepler were pointed at the Galactic bulge, it could conduct a…

Microlensing studies of quasars can reveal dark matter lumps over a broad mass spectrum; we highlight the importance of monitoring quasars which are seen through the halos of low-redshift galaxies. For these configurations microlensing by…

Four planets have recently been discovered by gravitational microlensing. The most recent of these discoveries is the lowest-mass planet known to exist around a normal star. The detection of planets in gravitational microlensing events was…

We investigate the possibility of using globular clusters as targets for microlensing searches. Such searches will be challenging and require more powerful telescopes than now employed, but are feasible in the 0 future. Although expected…

The discovery of extra-solar planets is arguably the most exciting development in astrophysics during the past 15 years, rivalled only by the detection of dark energy. Two projects unite the communities of exoplanet scientists and…

Massive gravitational microlensing programs were begun about a decade ago as a means to search for compact baryonic dark matter in the Galaxy, but before the first events were detected the technique was also proposed as a means of detecting…

Of all planet-finding techniques, microlensing is potentially the most sensitive to Earth-mass planets. However, microlensing lightcurves generically yield only the planet-star mass ratio: the mass itself is uncertain to a factor of a few.…

I discuss current and future applications of pixel lensing: the microlensing of unresolved stars. Pixel lensing is the tool of choice for studying the Macho dark matter content of external galaxies like Andromeda (M31), and is at the heart…

Since the first microlensing planet discovery in 2003, more than 200 planets have been detected with gravitational microlensing, in addition to several free-floating planet and black hole candidates. In this chapter the microlensing theory…

Je presente une revue des microlentilles gravitationnelles en quatre lecons. Dans un premier temps, je discute la theorie des microlentilles dans le contexte general des lentilles, en incluant les effets de la taille finie des sources, de…

With several detections, the technique of gravitational microlensing has proven useful for studying planets that orbit stars at Galactic distances, and it can even be applied to detect planets in neighbouring galaxies. So far, planet…

Major progresses have been made this last year towards a better knowledge of the invisible mass. Michel Spiro will talk in details about the micro-lensing experiments and their promising results; the ROSAT satellite has provided extended…

Foundations of standard theory of microlensing are described, namely we consider microlensing stars in Galactic bulge, the Magellanic Clouds or other nearby galaxies. We suppose that gravitational microlenses lie between an Earth observer…

Although many methods of detecting extra-solar planets have been proposed and successful implementation of some of these methods enabled a rapidly increasing number of exoplanet detections, little has been discussed about the method of…

Microlensing can be used to discover exoplanets of a wide range of masses with orbits beyond ~ 1 AU, and even free-floating planets. The WFIRST mission will use microlensing to discover approximately 1600 planets by monitoring ~100 million…